THE OTHER WITHIN 12/14/2009
 
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I am currently staying in Buenos Aires for a period of research which will last for roughly two months. My own first knowledge of the place is minimal, however my research is concerned with drawing a link between the theory of Tango, touch and the body in constant movement.
Buenos Aires being the city of Tango and a place which history is deeply rooted in the concept of migration, represent the place where in the next few weeks I will attempt to extend my enquire, through exploring the city’s social, political and cultural life, .

The engagement with touch is not an exploration of something I could clearly define as a sensing, but as an encounter with the notion of a sensing body in movement.

One of the things that one cannot avoid when stepping foot in Buenos Aires is coming to terms with the events which has left indelible scars in the country’s psyche and soul and still now ripples through the life of its people.

In brief, during the late seventies, when the government was overthrown by the military junta ( 1976-83), roughly 30000 citizens, mainly left wing militant, women, children and other people totally extraneous to political events, have been kidnapped, tortured or thrown alive into the sea by the military dictatorship, because they were thought to be a ‘metaphysical enemy’ of the junta and a threat to the security and stability of the nation. They have came to be called the ‘Desaparecidos’

A pacific protest was organised by the mothers of the ‘Disappeared’. This involved the meeting of all their mothers and wives in the major square (Plaza de Mayo) where everyday they would walk endlessly around the main monument of the square in front of the government palace, in the hope to find out about the destiny of their beloved and to stop the kidnapping of more innocents.
Their symbol is a white handkerchief wrapped around their head.

For more info http://www.yendor.com

Last week I have attended the weekly manifestation of the ‘ Mothers of Plaza the Mayo’ which currently take place every Thursday at 15.30.

These are a few thoughts that came to me in the aftermath of the event.

Lifessness is movement how do dead stories move?
Can we have the power to present what in the present has no name?
Images of traces and traces of images.
There is nothing that was there and now is gone.
 


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